Hello zk’in. Good­bye wrin­kles.

Zk’in Line Smooth­ing Serum con­tains a newly re­searched ex­tract of a South Amer­i­can plant clin­i­cally tested to smooth the ap­pear­ance of ex­pres­sion
lines and wrin­kles. This truly is Na­ture’s al­ter­na­tive to in­jecta­bles.

Over time, when­ever we think back to that mo­ment and those words, the emo­tions they con­jure stim­u­late even more neg­a­tive thoughts that match the orig­i­nal pain and feel­ings of low self­es­teem, cre­at­ing the release of even more bio­chem­i­cals tuned to neg­a­tiv­ity.

Take Dad’s re­mark about be­ing dumb, for ex­am­ple. It’s still in­side, deep in your sub­con­scious. So when your boss points out some slight er­ror in your work one day, what hap­pens? It de­liv­ers an emo­tional punch way out of pro­por­tion to what the sit­u­a­tion war­rants. You freak out. Ev­ery as­so­ci­ated mem­ory that res­onates to feel­ing stupid shows back up—your dad’s words, ev­ery ‘C’ on a re­port card, ev­ery in­ner hope of suc­cess that died, no mat­ter how small. You’re so stupid, the In­ner Critic whis­pers. And down the tubes you go. So what about the times you were praised? The times you heard, “Well done! I’m so proud of you!” What hap­pened then? What did those words do? Strangely, praise is less emo­tion­ally pow­er­ful than crit­i­cism. We get com­pli­mented on our work or on how we look and what hap­pens? We duck our heads, sud­denly shy, mur­mur­ing things like, “Oh, it was noth­ing.” Or we say, “Oh, please, stop. You’re em­bar­rass­ing me.” We say the things we’ve been taught to say lest we ap­pear pride­ful.

So—just how much of a chance do you think the good stuff has of sink­ing in com­pared with the ‘bad stuff’?

Not much. fur­ther how can you trans­form the pres­sure of per­fect into a pas­sion of prac­tice?

First off, it’s im­por­tant to re­alise you’ll never get rid of the Critic. That voice (or voices) is part of you, made up of mem­o­ries and emo­tions buried deep in your sub­con­scious mind. The more you wres­tle with the In­ner Critic, the more you wish it would go away, the more you worry about it or hate it—the stronger it gets.

“What we re­sist, per­sists.” And it’s true. When we do bat­tle with the In­ner Critic, life be­comes all about … you guessed it: the In­ner Critic. We end up feed­ing it by re­act­ing to it. We end up making the In­ner Critic real by tak­ing it so se­ri­ously.

Yes, the In­ner Critic is a bitch, but the thing to re­alise is that the In­ner Critic isn’t you. It’s not real. It’s just a mem­ory. An emo­tion­al­ly­driven trig­ger mech­a­nism—a voice in your head—a pro­gram that gets fired in your brain, like hit­ting the Ex­cel or Pow­erpoint icon on your com­puter screen.

Some­body says some­thing and bam! the pro­gram comes up … the neu­rons in the brain fire the pat­tern, the mem­o­ries flood out, the emo­tions trig­ger the

release of a bio­chem­i­cal cock­tail that drowns you in sor­row (again)… and sud­denly your whole life is back to be­ing about how your Big Bot­tom kept you from get­ting Good Grades and into a Good School.

Is that really what hap­pened? Of course not. Do you really be­lieve that? No. But some­where in your sub­con­scious mind there’s still a lit­tle girl (or boy) who does be­lieve it, and that’s okay.

The In­ner Critic is just a part of life—it’s some­thing that ev­ery­body deals with. It’s not a big deal un­less we make it one. And a large part of invit­ing the In­ner Coach to come take its place is con­sciously recog­nis­ing that fact.

Once you’ve put the In­ner Critic in its proper place (or per­spec­tive) you’re ready to take the next con­scious step, which is to catch the In­ner Critic at the start of its rant. Be­fore you get emo­tional and start down mem­ory lane, no­tice when the voice(s) starts bang­ing on about some­thing. Catch your­self start­ing to get up­set about some­thing you’ve done ‘wrong’ or what­ever the voice(s) is at­tempt­ing to tell you.

Stop. Step back. Take a mo­ment and breathe. Put the Critic in its proper place. Then, as dis­pas­sion­ately as pos­si­ble, sim­ply look at what it’s say­ing. Ex­am­ine it as if it were a bug.

Con­grat­u­la­tions! You’ve caught your­self in the act of lis­ten­ing to the In­ner Critic and put it in the right per­spec­tive, which means now you’ve got a choice. If you feel a big emo­tional re­ac­tion to the voice brew­ing, take a few min­utes and dive into what the In­ner Critic is say­ing and process it by ask­ing your­self the truth ques­tion. Would you choose to be ruled by an in­ner critic? Hell no! This sim­ple ques­tion will em­power you to ac­knowl­edge that isn’t a con­scious ac­tion is a sub­con­scious re­ac­tion. Some­thing is trig­ger­ing you to re­act, and this re­ac­tion is a gift in very strange wrap­ping pa­per.

As Wayne Dyer said, “When you change the way you view things, the things you view change.”

The In­ner Critic is just a pro­gram. It does have value, how­ever, in that the voice can point you to­wards old sub­con­scious emo­tional pro­grams buried deep in­side, but once you’ve got the con­scious tool to process and shift those pro­grams; once you’ve con­sciously re­alised the In­ner Critic isn’t really you; once you can re­mem­ber to in­ter­rupt the voice, mid-rant, and think to your­self, Hey, wait a minute … stop— you’ve al­ready turned the cor­ner.

You’ve al­ready set your In­ner Coach into mo­tion.

Next step? Ask your Coach how best to ap­proach the sit­u­a­tion you find your­self in. Let’s say you’re in the pre­vi­ous sce­nario where your boss pointed out an er­ror you made. You’ve caught your In­ner Critic. You’ve put it in its place. You’ve in­vited your In­ner Coach onto the play­ing field. Now ask your­self, “How would I coach a friend to re­spond to valid crit­i­cism of their work by the boss?” Or, “How would I coach my child to re­spond to valid crit­i­cism from their teacher?”

And then take your own ad­vice. n

An in­ter­na­tion­ally renowned physi­cian, and de­vel­oper of The Life­line Tech­nique™, Dr Dar­ren Weiss­man is au­thor of The Power of In­fi­nite Love & Grat­i­tude and ‘Awak­en­ing to the Se­cret Code’ He will be fa­cil­i­tat­ing work­shops in Aus­tralia in Fe­bru­ary, 2016.